


Memento Mori

by Barb Cummings (Rahirah)



Series: The Barbverse [31]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-21
Updated: 2009-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-03 12:07:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rahirah/pseuds/Barb%20Cummings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It should have been him.  But it wasn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memento Mori

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set in the same universe as _A Raising in the Sun_, _Necessary Evils_, et. al. (See the [Barbverse Timeline](http://sleepingjaguars.com/buffy/viewpage.php?page=timeline) for specifics.) It contains spoilers for previous works in the series.

She found Spike sitting on the porch, a cigarette smoldering to undisturbed ash in his fingers, staring at the doll propped on his knee. The doll stared back, its skirts falling in prim ruffled waves across black denim. Buffy almost expected the glassy eyes to roll up in the painted china face, and the Cupid's-bow lips to part. She imagined it crooning its mistress's lilting madness into his ear, and fought down the urge to grab the thing and smash it.

 

Instead she sank down beside him on the steps, gathering her knees to her chin. Spike didn't say anything. And Spike always had something to say.

 

Why had he loved her? Drusilla had made him, yeah, but there was no rule that said vampires had to love their sires. She'd been a crazy, skanky, evil ho, and fine, until very recently Spike would have seen the evil part as a plus, but, but, but. _She saved me from mediocrity_, he'd told her once. And Buffy'd thought, but never said, _You moron. That's the one thing you've never needed saving from._

 

But he had loved her, with all the depth of passion he possessed. For a hundred years, and more, and there was no way she'd ever beat Drusilla's time there.

 

Her hand ghosted up the arch of his spine, fingers making tentative little circles in the tense muscle between his shoulder blades. Bit by bit the taut lines of his body relaxed, and he flung his cigarette butt away and leaned into her, head lying heavy on her shoulder. Her creature of darkness, bending insensibly towards the sun. Spike drew a deep shuddering breath, and the doll toppled over and cartwheeled down the steps, its painted smile smashing open against the pavement.

 

Buffy nuzzled the bristly-soft curve of his skull. Still getting used to that. All those gorgeous platinum curls, shorn down to brown fuzz, but hair, after all, grew back. "Maybe it's..." She couldn't really say _better this way_, could she? Or maybe she could. "I mean, when you think about it, she's at peace now, right?" Non-existence counted as peace, didn't it? "She was crazy, Spike. Broken." She nodded at the shattered doll, lying in a heap of crumpled brown lace at their feet. "Some things can't be fixed."

 

"Don't you think I know that?" His fingers tightened on her arm, hard enough to bruise. "It should have been me," he whispered. "Not you, not fucking Angel, especially not one of Finn's toy soldiers. Was what she made me for. To care for her. If this was the only way, she deserved... I could have made it good for her. Hurt her the way she liked it, instead of - " His eyes scrunched closed beneath swelling ridges of bone, his lips twisted back above sharpening canines, and the dry, savage, wounded-animal noise in the back of his throat was so much worse than a human sob. "She hurt so much, for so long. All I ever wanted was to stop the pain."

 

Buffy held him tight, stroking his brow ridges, wanting to snap at him, tell him to get over it, Drusilla had never been worth this. But she knew something about monsters, and how hard it was to stop loving them. And all she said was, "You did. You did."

 

 

**END**


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